Rerun: Wet Hot American Summer

Summary

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Unspooled: "Rerun: Wet Hot American Summer" (August 6, 2026)

Hosts: Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson
Theme: Revisiting the cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer" on its 25th anniversary, dissecting its history, comedy style, impact, and enduring appeal. The episode also explores camp culture, sketch comedy origins, and the leap these comedians made from TV to film.

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Episode Overview

To celebrate "Wet Hot American Summer" returning to theaters for its 25th anniversary, Paul and Amy revisit their deep-dive episode on the film. They trace the film's roots in sketch comedy, break down its meta-comedy and subversive parody, and reflect on its impact on contemporary comedy and the careers of its cast. With personal anecdotes and industry insights, they critique why the film bombed on release but ultimately grew into a beloved classic.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins: From Sketch Group to Cult Film

• Roots in The State:
  • Paul and Amy discuss how David Wain and Michael Showalter’s background in NYU's giant sketch group, The State, and their MTV journey set the foundation for "Wet Hot American Summer."
  • Paul on sketch freedom: "The State kind of paved the way to give us a little bit more freedom...But it was still very tough. There has been nothing more depressing than realizing that MTV gets older and older, and their brain just feels geriatric at some point." – Paul, [10:19]
• Move to Film:
  • After unsuccessful TV runs, Wain and Showalter looked to make something truly their own, inspired by their days at summer camp.
  • Amy on the script: "The plot is basically this. It’s the last day of summer camp and everybody wants to get laid." – Amy, [11:39]

2. Production Backstory

• Casting and Filming Hurdles:
  • Attachment of Janine Garofalo helped secure funding after multiple failed attempts.
  • Filmed in 28 days in fall at Camp Towanda, Pennsylvania, actors faked summer in cold weather (you can see their breath in scenes).
  • Notable cast at the dawn of their careers: Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper.
  • Amy's fun fact: "I went on their website looking for the page that would say, ‘We are the camp from Wet Hot American Summer.’ And it wasn’t there...I was so surprised!" – Amy, [18:33]
• Release & Reception:
  • Premiered at Sundance 2001 to crowd applause but no buyers; sold for only $100K, flopped at theaters, panned by Roger Ebert (one star).
  • Found life as a cult classic via DVD and streaming, later spawning prequel and sequel Netflix series.

3. Meta-Parody and Comedy Structure

• Parody with Emotional Core:
  • Film both embraces and lampoons camp/comedy tropes (e.g., abrupt softball showdown, over-the-top life lessons, timeline absurdity).
  • Paul on parody: "There is a logic to the absurdity...You have to have a center in these movies." – Paul, [24:14]
• Subverting ‘Happy Endings’:
  • Relationship arcs (like Coop/Katie and the infamous Garofalo/Hyde Pierce pairing) play against expectations.
  • Amy on real teen endings: "It’s almost making fun of how we just buy the happy endings in every other film, you know, like ‘The Breakfast Club.’ Oh, great, Molly Ringwald is gonna be with Judd Nelson now. Come on!" – Amy, [28:31]
• Daring Tone:
  • Outrageously pushes boundaries—minor/teen sex, camp absurdity, and intentionally anti-climactic or illogical sequences.
  • Paul on absurdity: "They are putting their sensibility in a summer camp world...they turn it on its head and then they hit it over with a frying pan." – Paul, [35:03]

4. Cast, Characters, and Performances

• Paul Rudd’s Star Performance:
  • The breakout performance described as "bone deep" comedy with unique physicality and commitment.
  • Amy on Rudd: "There's just something where...Paul Rudd is maybe one of the greatest comedy minds of my generation." – Amy, [43:48]
• Christopher Meloni & Emotional Centerpieces:
  • Meloni’s ‘Gene’ described as weirdly the emotional core.
  • Paul on Meloni: "He fully transforms himself to this guy Gene...there is something about his journey." – Paul, [46:22]
• Sincerity in Outrageousness:
  • Earnestness of characters like Bradley Cooper’s and Michael Ian Black’s couple finale is contrasted with the more absurd, loud performances.

5. Camp, Culture, and Personal Connections

• Hosts’ Camp Histories:
  • Both Paul and Amy confess to not loving real summer camp; reflect how the film captures the awkwardness and rituals.
  • Paul on camp culture: "Camp for me was going somewhere like school...I didn’t like playing sports." – Paul [16:47]
• Jewish Summer Camp Tradition:
  • Discussion on how summer camp is especially rooted in Jewish American culture.
• Making the Movie = Living the Movie:
  • The blurred lines between filming and real summer camp camaraderie among cast and crew.
  • Amy on set life: "They're living in this life where it feels as though summer camp and the set are blurring. Everybody’s getting drunk every day. People are sleeping in each other’s bunks...the movie and the making of the movie have become one thing." – Amy, [71:41]/[71:49]

6. Legacy and Influence

• Reappraisal Over Time:
  • Comparison to similar cult comedies (“Big Lebowski”, “Office Space”, “Idiocracy”) that were misunderstood at first but became cultural touchstones.
  • Observations on the difficulty of comedy getting critical respect vs. drama.
  • Paul’s pop culture reference: "It's like that Marty McFly line in Back to the Future: 'Yeah, maybe you’re not ready for this, but your kids are gonna love it.' That idea is prevalent in all culture, always." – Paul, [70:29]
• Comedy’s Evolving Place:
  • The film’s comedic language is now more widely embraced, shaping modern comedy from “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” to “Eastbound & Down”.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• The ‘Meet in 10 years’ Scene (Parodying Nostalgic Happy Endings):
  • [15:34] Paul: "Let's all promise that in 10 years from today we'll meet again and see what kind of people we've blossomed into..."
  • [16:08] Amy: "Agreed."
  • [16:10] Paul: "Cause I have something at 11."
• On Relationships:
  • [28:31] Amy: "I genuinely don't care that he’s kind of lame, you know?...But right now, I am entirely about sex. I just want Andy, I want to take him and grab him and just fuck his brains out, you know? So that's where my priorities are right now."
• On Commitment to Absurd Comedy:
  • [41:57] Amy: "Paul Rudd...he's doing something that's just like, to me, one step further...he’s living in that scene in some sort of a different reality than everybody else."
• On Comedy’s Need for Time:
  • [68:38] Paul: "Comedy always takes a little bit of time, but the cool kids get it."

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Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• [02:32] – Paul’s personal Wet Hot American Summer live show/UCB connection
• [04:47] – Paul’s and Amy’s most traumatic/scary camp stories
• [07:47] – MTV and The State—history, censorship, transition to film
• [11:39] – Movie’s turbulent script and financing journey
• [13:33] – Casting real-life stars making their debuts
• [15:25] – The iconic “let’s meet in ten years” scene
• [18:02] – Filming at Camp Towanda, shooting in the freezing cold
• [20:21] – Oners and low-budget creativity in camera work
• [22:10] – On meta-parody and undermining summer camp tropes (softball game bit)
• [24:31] – Parody vs. reality; relationships in the movie
• [36:28] – Killing children "for laughs," script lines that went too far
• [39:20] – Paul Rudd’s "bad boyfriend" archetype; favorite lines (“my butt itches”)
• [46:22] – Christopher Meloni’s performance and emotional arc
• [53:42] – Bradley Cooper’s earnestness and reflections on working with Wain
• [56:26] – How Wain/Showalter’s sensibility opened doors for modern comedy
• [60:54] – The iconic, unexpectedly tender Cooper/Michael Ian Black sex scene
• [64:17] – Showalter & Wain’s careers, post-Wet Hot projects
• [68:38] – The slow acceptance of radical comedy and Paul’s take on LA/Nyc audience differences
• [70:29] – Comparing cult hits: Big Lebowski, Office Space, Jennifer’s Body, etc.
• [71:41] – The surreal overlap of camp life and film production

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Final Thoughts

Paul and Amy underscore how "Wet Hot American Summer" succeeded by foregrounding personal voice and subverting genre conventions, despite initial poor reception. Its sincerity, anarchic humor, and meta-awareness helped shape an entire subculture of comedy, proving its status as a comedy classic with a striking afterlife in both pop culture and comedy circles.

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For deeper episode notes, further discussion, and bonus content, Paul and Amy invite listeners to join their Substack and YouTube channels.

Transcript

[Amy Nicholson]

Unschooled.

[Paul Scheer]

Hey everybody, if you are surprised about seeing Wet Hot American Summer in your feed right now, we are not doing it again. This is actually a rerun to celebrate the 25th anniversary of wet Hot American Summer, which is coming back into theaters. We have decided to re release our episode about it and later in the week continue our celebration of all things David Wayne and the brand new David Wayne film Gail Daughtry and the celebrity sex pass. We'll be sitting down with David Wayne, the director of what Hot American Summer himself, on Real Confession. So stay tuned for that.

[Amy Nicholson]

Now let's talk about a summer that is really wet. I'm talking about boats, waters, storms, Poseidon heading to Ithaca. There's even more Odyssey talk that I think has been rattling around my brain because I was thinking, you know what we should do actually to really think about adaptations of Homer? Let's do the Coen Brothers. Oh Brother art thou. Rick Clooney as Ulysses trying to make it home to his wife Penny, played by Holly Hunter, with lots of bluegrass on the way. What do you say?

[Paul Scheer]

I love it because it's easier for me to get a ticket to watch this at home than it is for me to see the Odyssey in the theater. I love it. I am excited to revisit this film and if you want to continue our discussion about Wet Hot or even Gail Daughtry, check out our substack and make sure that you are subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com ETUnspooled thank you to everybody who puts the show together. We couldn't do it without you. And now enjoy Wet Hot American Summer. The year is 2001 and ugh. You taste like a podcast. I don't like you anymore. The movie Wet Hot American Summer.

[Amy Nicholson]

My baby.

[Paul Scheer]

Cinematic hot takes and the 100 best will be shot into space.

[Amy Nicholson]

Hello everyone and welcome to Unspooled.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees, and in case you missed them, we have

[Amy Nicholson]

covered the AFI top 100. Now we are checking out movies from three major the Letterbox top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb top 250 and the New York Times 1000 essential films.

[Paul Scheer]

And we will be chasing our own curiosity like we are doing today as we kick off the summer movie season. Talking about what Hot American Summer. I am Paul Scheer. I am an actor, writer and director and I have a very special relationship with this movie. Not only am I in the sequel series on Netflix. But. But the night that this movie came out in New York City, I hosted a live show at the UCB theater with the entire cast of what? Hot American Summer. We did a show, a fake talk show called Talk show. And I actually put a clip of this online right now on my website. You can check it out in my book section about UCB. And I believe it's also on my YouTube page. You can see this entire cast because they were not booked on any shows, so they came on to pretend to be on a real talk show.

[Amy Nicholson]

Paul, how long have we been doing the show together?

[Paul Scheer]

My God, I don't know, 15 years.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, long enough that you know that of course I found us. And of course I pulled a clip. Here it is.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Our next guest is also in the film Wet Hot American Summer. She's been in films such as Mystery

[Paul Scheer]

Men, Reality Bites now and Then, the Truth About Cats and Dogs, the Cable guy, cupland, Dogma, 200 cigarettes, Titan AE. You know what? Actually, here, we'll just pet this for the Internet Movie Database.

[Amy Nicholson]

We just wanna pass this along to the audience.

[Paul Scheer]

It's been a lot of stuff. He's also in Wet Hot American Summer.

[Amy Nicholson]

Give it up for Janine. Correctly. Janine, how did those degenerates Michael Showalter

[Paul Scheer]

and David Wayne convince you to be

[Amy Nicholson]

in Wet Hot American side? I'm sorry, I can't hear you. You aren't projecting enough. What? I mean, I live to be your archaeologist. Anyway. Hello. Hi, I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times, and I'm a graduate of Camp Lajita in Texas. It's a Girl Scout camp. One night, another Girl Scout camper, her dad, was there and he was very mean, and he convinced me that pterodactyls were still alive and that they would attack my tent in the middle of the night and they would probably carry me away and eat me. And I beamed him and had nightmares all night. And the embarrassing part is, I think I was, like, 12.

[Paul Scheer]

You know, this is the thing. I could never scare my kids the way that adults used to scare us. My stepdad told me and my friends when we were out in the backyard camping, the fun, exciting backyard, that there was a serial killer on the loose named the Pigman. And in the middle of the night, he came up to our tent and, like, squashed his nose up and started making pig noises. And we. I mean, frighten the living shit out of us. Terrifying. I would never do that to my kid.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, my boyfriend recently did that to me. Like, we went away for one of our anniversaries, and we got a cabin up, like, by Lake Isabella.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

And he decided that there was a scratching noise outside that was somebody called hook Foot, and it was a man who had a hook for a foot. And I know that there is no such thing as a hook foot, but I can't handle that stuff, and I've really lost it. And even now, he will do hook foot at me, and I get really scared.

[Paul Scheer]

I love hook foot. I'm gonna steal that for J. I mean, I will scare June without any hesitation. Just not kids. So I'm all on board for the way that Adam is bringing the legend of Hookfoot to life. Amy. Like I said, I have a lot of connection to this film. So this is gonna be an interesting one to chat about, because I remember it very clearly. The year was 2001, and David Wayne and Michael Showalter are finally. Finally able to make their final first movie. But let's jump back 13 years in time when David Wayne and Michael Showalter are doing comedy together in 1988. So basically, when they were teenagers, they formed this giant sketch comedy group. All of them were students of film and drama at nyu, and they started basically doing NYU tv. That's what I remember hearing. And then they got to do skits on MTV as a part of Jon Stewart's show. You wrote it, you watch it. Hi, I'm Jon Stewart, ex volleyball star, host of MTV's you wrote it, you watch it, you send us your letters, and we reenact them.

[Amy Nicholson]

Genius.

[Paul Scheer]

The show's got all kinds of topics. Oh, that's nice. From dealing with your parents. I'm leaving forever to go wash some Satan. Daily hygiene. To Jean Claude Van Damme's younger brother Phil. You wrote it, you watch it. Tonight at 6:00pm by the way, Mark Johnson of Massachusetts. Penicillin. Penicillin. Penicillin, please. And then they got their own show. Who's got something to drink?

[Amy Nicholson]

I do.

[Paul Scheer]

What is it?

[Amy Nicholson]

It's orange juice. Orange juice. Hey, I want to dip my balls in it. Who's got a bowl of something?

[Paul Scheer]

I do. What's in it?

[Amy Nicholson]

Oatmeal. Oatmeal. Oatmeal. Oatmeal.

[Paul Scheer]

Oatmeal.

[Amy Nicholson]

I want to dip my balls in it.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, this was a very big show for me because it felt like these were people roughly or just a little bit older than me. And I loved that show.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I feel like I'm gonna learn so much from you in this episode, I feel like if I've ever done a movie on this show that is like, your expertise.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, man, here we are.

[Amy Nicholson]

I'm ready. I'm ready, I'm ready. But there is one thing I have a little bit of expertise in, which is what it is like to work with mtv.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, me too.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh. Oh, yes. We are all MTV refugees. Even my boyfriend Adam is an MTV refugee. Surprisingly, the State has some friction with mtv. In part, this is because the State makes dumb jokes about their balls, and they have to agree that they're going to hold golf balls during that skit as cover so they don't get censored. Oh, I'm dipping these golf balls in it. But also because the state is too smart. This is very much my MTV News had clashes with them. MTV wanted them to make parodies of stuff like Beverly Hills 90210, and it vetoed it when they tried to make jokes about the Catcher in the Rye. The network did not trust their audience would have any idea who was getting parodied when they did a skit like this.

[Paul Scheer]

We're back with screen star Gloria Lake. Before the break, you were telling us about your latest picture. Well, Rick, it's so hard to know where to begin.

[Amy Nicholson]

My first B pictures were filmed at Senate City Studios, but there was so much before that. So many backwoods bus stations.

[Paul Scheer]

Gab, gab, gab, talk, talk, talk.

[Amy Nicholson]

Why don't you give me a straight answer, Opal, you said recently you were on an airplane with somebody who did not know who Humphrey Bogart is, but maybe if they had watched the State, they'd have some kind of a clue

[Paul Scheer]

they would get there. Well, I'll tell you this much. Years later, when Human Giant, my sketch group, did our show on mtv, we were saved by an amazing executive, Tony Des, who really understood the power of, like, us and Andy Milonakis next to, like, Laguna beach and stepped in when we were getting notes like, this sketch makes no sense. And we're like, yeah, because it's a sketch. It's a comed. The, like, people were giving us notes as if we were a reality show, not a sketch comedy show. Like, literally. We did a sketch called Hot Air Balloon Cops. And the note was, well, why would you ever do high speed chases in a hot air balloon? You would never catch the car. It's like, that's the joke. That is the joke. So I believe that the state kind of paved the way to give us a little bit more freedom, but it was still very tough. Many years later, my God, there has

[Amy Nicholson]

been nothing more depressing than realizing that MTV gets older and older and older and older, and their brain just feels geriatric at some point.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, it's nuts. I mean, you know, one of the things that happened with the State was they thought the grass would be greener on the other side of the fence when they took their show to cbs. But it was worse at cbs. And I don't even know if those shows even aired, but they shot episodes of, like, a CBS show that was supposed to be in contention with Saturday Night Live. It basically they just couldn't get out. And I feel like they truly were hindered by the fact that there was no Internet. Right. Because once Human giant, we had YouTube. I mean, we basically came out the same year that YouTube started. So that really helped the show. Chappelle's show was helped that way. Key and Peele was helped that way. But, you know, the State didn't really have that. They were making these great short films and great stuff, but it was hard. If you didn't see it at that time, it couldn't catch on.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I feel like we could easily go down this whole rabbit hole now of, like, wouldn't it be great if the things that mattered the most in culture were controlled by people who are the age of the people who wanted to make them and not, like always in everything. Arts, politics, whatever it is. There's always, like, some other layer above that doesn't really understand the moment. But anyways, we shall carry on. So the State leaves tv, they leave mtv, then they leave cbs. They start trying to make something that is truly, truly, truly them. David Wayne and Michael Showalter start working on a script that is inspired by their days at summer camp. And the plot is basically this. It's the last day of summer camp and everybody wants to get laid.

[Paul Scheer]

They get Janine Garofalo attached. And at that point, that's a big attachment. Janine was kind of at her height at this point. You know, I think that in rewatching this, I love Janine. She's great. And I think people often forget what a great actress and comedian she is.

[Amy Nicholson]

She was the coolest girl in the world to me, man. In the 90s.

[Paul Scheer]

1 million percent. And so, because of getting Janine attached, they get money and then things fall apart.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, basically, they get a person to give them money, that falls apart. Then they get another person to give them money, and that falls apart. And that keeps happening for three years. I think they even start showing up at people's doors being like, I thought you had a company. You're gone. What is this? Anyway, they finally get the 1.8 million that they need to spend one month at a summer camp in Pennsylvania and they get their cast.

[Paul Scheer]

And now there's five members of the state involved in this movie, which is kind of just under half. There's no Carrie Kenney, there's no Thomas Lennon, but there is Ken Marino, Michael Ian Black, and Joe Latrulio. It seemed like Ken, Michael and Joe kind of went back and forth. There was like two divisions of this group. There was a show called Viva Variety that was on Comedy Central that kind of had some of the state. Then there was Stella, which is another part of the group that was more David Wayne, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black. So this group was so large that there were little factions on either side of it. I remember at least that's the way it was told to me. I think now that they are all friends, but youthful separations and also it's hard to appease 11 people or 10 people. How many people they had in their group that was a big, big group. But they don't just have the cast of the state. They have SNL's Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd of Clueless, and Christopher Maloney of Law and svu. Now, was he on SVU at this point?

[Amy Nicholson]

I think he was already on it, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Wow. Okay. That's amazing.

[Amy Nicholson]

I know. Even more amazing is that they have this just jaw dropping shortlist of people who are making their big screen debut their first time ever in a movie. Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper.

[Paul Scheer]

Now, Wet Hot American Summer premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Crowds loved it, but no one bought it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Finally, they agree to take $100,000 for this film, which is sad, kind of insulting, and it plays in a couple theaters. July 27, 2001. Nobody comes. Maybe they're all at UCB. I think, actually I heard a joke from Amy that there were more people at UCB than there were in the movie theater. It makes less than $300,000 and it gets bad reviews. Roger Ebert gives it one star. And I just want to add for context of the one star that Roger Ebert gives it. Other movies that Roger Ebert has given one star to include a couple movies on the show. Armageddon, Blue Velvet, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

[Paul Scheer]

Wow.

[Amy Nicholson]

And a couple movies I would be totally up for doing. Dirty Dancing, the Raid, Team World, Police, Swing Kids, Weekend at Bernie's Wedding, Singer Zoolander, UHF and Scrooged. And also a movie that we really shouldn't do because I cannot argue that it's at all worthwhile. But it is a movie that's very near and dear to my heart. It is maybe my wet hot American summer of the Nintendo road trip movie, the wizard with Fred Savage.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, now this movie, you know, does what all great comedy movies do. It becomes a hit when people can buy the dvd and it explodes and truly alters the direction of everybody's career. I know that we talked a little while ago about the cast of 40 year old virgin and how that kind of blew everybody up. This movie has a very similar vibe to it. Paul Rudd gets cast in Anchorman. Elizabeth Banks gets cast in 40 year old virgin, and it goes on to become a cult classic.

[Amy Nicholson]

I like that idea of this movie living on and on because it's a joke that I think is even tied to in the movie itself. The camp counselors are saying, you know what? We should meet up again in 10 years.

[Paul Scheer]

Let's all promise that in 10 years from today we'll meet again and we'll see what kind of people we've blossomed into. Yeah. What time you want to meet?

[Amy Nicholson]

You mean 10 years from now? Yeah, let's meet in the morning so

[Paul Scheer]

we can make a day of it. Okay, so what is it?

[Amy Nicholson]

Is it like 9 or 9:30?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, let's say 9.

[Amy Nicholson]

That way we can be here by 9:30.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, no, why don't we say 9:30 and then make it your beeswax to be here at 9:30? We're all gonna be in our late 20s by then. I just don't see any reason why we can't be places on time. Okay, then, settled.

[Amy Nicholson]

9:30 it is. All agreed?

[Paul Scheer]

Agreed.

[Amy Nicholson]

Agreed.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Great.

[Paul Scheer]

Cause I have something at 11.

[Amy Nicholson]

You just got like a trapper keeper full of appointments, right?

[Paul Scheer]

No, I just have something in life that I can't change again because I already moved it twice.

[Amy Nicholson]

And they essentially do. I mean, this movie has inspired a prequel miniseries, a sequel miniseries. Paul, you're in them. You're a character named Dave.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, I work at Rolling Stone, I believe. And I am Elizabeth Banks boss because she is undercover.

[Amy Nicholson]

Aha.

[Paul Scheer]

Writing an article about what was it

[Amy Nicholson]

like for you to go to camp.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, you know, I. I was never on or in the camp sets. But I will say that I don't have any real connection to camp. Camp was not a part of my life. It was not really a thing that I look back fondly on. Camp for me was going somewhere like school. Where I was forced to play sports and I didn't like playing sports or as bad at playing sports, who knows. So I don't like camp. I have no fascination with camp. I never went to sleepaway camp. That's not my thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

I didn't like camp either. But I mean, I had to go to camp in Texas. There were scorpions in my bunk bed. There were fire ants. It was hot. Like I never got the camp experience where like it's a lake and we're having so much fun.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I also think it's very big in the Jewish community. Like camps for Jewish kids. Like all my friends who were Jewish would go away to these sleepaway camps. Not to kind of put a whole group of people in under one umbrella. But that seems to be, and still to this day, something that I've noticed. Like it's a. It's almost like a familial tradition. I think. You know, parents did it and then they send their kids to it. Then they're there and there and kids go away for about eight weeks.

[Amy Nicholson]

Which I think is like what this is, right? It's like an eight week camp. And I think it is a Jewish camp as well, right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, I think. Yeah, I think majority of them have that like basis. It's kind of amazing.

[Amy Nicholson]

Is that what Dirty Dancing is too? Maybe Roger Ebert just really hated camp.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, I think it's Dirty Dancing is a little bit different. Cause that's more like the resorts. But I think it's all this kind of idea of like we're going into the country now. They did shoot it at a real camp, this movie. They shot it in 28 days in a camp in Pennsylvania. They shot it during the fall. It was freezing out. You can sometimes see the breath of the actors in the scenes. Cause they're pretending to be super hot, but they are freezing. The real camp was called Camp Tawanda. It was a functioning sleepaway camp.

[Amy Nicholson]

I think it still is. I went on their website looking for the page that would say like, and we are the camp from Wet Hot American Summer. And it wasn't there. I was like, surely you would be bragging about this, right? Surely there'd be like a story of the camp. We were in Wet Hot American Summer and it wasn't there. And I was so surprised because like I found footage of the guy who ran the camp. They were always saying that the guy who ran the camp was like around and he wouldn't let them chew gum. And it was a little bit annoying. And he was Mad that they were being messy. I found a scene where he was, like, trying to use Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd to promote the camp. But it didn't go well, which is maybe why he wrote it out.

[Paul Scheer]

Why would you send your child here to Campton?

[Amy Nicholson]

I would send my child to Camp Towanda because they have awesome tetherball, awesome basketball courts, really cool staff, great food, good times, guaranteed laughs, and best friends forever.

[Paul Scheer]

That's good. Hey, Paul Rudd, what's so great about Camp Towanda? At Camp Tawanda, the sun shines every day, not just the actual summer, metaphorically.

[Amy Nicholson]

Your kid should have a first kiss somewhere. Let it be camped.

[Paul Scheer]

No, get them off.

[Amy Nicholson]

Or more basically, it's going well. Like they're trying. Amy Poehler's really trying to give him what he wants. And then she's like, can you get your first kiss here? And he is like, okay, enough, enough, enough, enough.

[Paul Scheer]

You know what I will say about this movie and rewatching it. There's some really amazing camera work. A lot of oners, but simple oners. I know we're obsessed with oners right now, but you could tell that they were shooting this movie very quickly. I think that oners when shot on a low budget film really are there because you don't have to go back from multiple moments of coverage. You can just kind of get the scene all in one if you really create a great shot.

[Amy Nicholson]

There's a couple that are amazing, aren't there?

[Paul Scheer]

Truly? I mean, from the getting high in that kind of crack den scene to, you know, trying to find the phone, there's just wonderful shots. Really.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love the one where he's like, where the kids are going down the river and they're river rafting and Ken Marino in one shot, gets out of the raft and runs across and gets onto the riverbank and starts running away to try to get back to go get laid. I was like, oh, my God, how did you pull that off? Or the other one where they're like towards the end where they're talking about the space missile, space satellite coming down to crash on them. And it's like a one shot where they're walking across the park talking, talking, talking, and let's meet at that table in 10 seconds and there hasn't been a table and you turn on and 10 seconds later there is a table and everybody's just sitting there. I love that stuff because it just makes you go, wow. You don't need the special effect, you just need the timing.

[Paul Scheer]

And to that point, this movie I Think embraces its low budget nature. It doesn't feel low budget. It looks great. It's actually lit really well. It sounds really good, but they have fun in moments. Back to that scene where the kids are on the Devil Canyon waterfall and they're almost gonna go over and Ken Marino saves them. You just have a shot on Joe Latrulio watching Ken Marino save them, just going, oh, wow. Oh, no. Wow, he got him. And you never see the scene. It's such a funny, subversive way to do it. But while it's kind of, I guess, maybe poking fun at the fact that they don't have the budget to do it, the movie never feels like it's making fun, that it's a movie. I think the movie does take its job seriously, which is tough because this movie is very meta, too. I mean, it's a movie where there's multiple montages. It takes place in one day. The timeline is all wonky, but there is a logic in the absurdity.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely making fun of summer camp movie conventions. Right?

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, that huge scene where they're like, we're gonna have the big softball game out of nowhere. Right? And it's just like giving you the plot summary of every single sports kids movie that you've ever seen in your entire life. We have put together an unlikely team of misfits, and we've been training like crazy all summer. Yeah, it's a motley crew that you'd think would never even be able to win a single game. We had a kooky training period where it seemed like. Well, it seemed like nothing was gonna go right. But, guys, somehow we made it to the finals. So I say when those anonymously evil campers from Tiger Claw get here, we give it our best shot and we try to come from behind at the last minute with some weird trick play

[Paul Scheer]

that we made up and we win the game.

[Amy Nicholson]

What do you say, team? It sounds like pretty well worn territory. The whole thing feels kind of trite. I say we forget it. Is that how everybody feels? Yeah, pretty much. I love anonymously evil softball team. Right? Because that's the kind of thing where I'm rolling my eyes a little bit at the cliche because, yes, I'm bored and I've seen these movies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I got really stuck up on that idea of how we really do just assume in all of these movies we take it for granted that the other team is always bad. Like in all of these movies that summer Camp is evil bad. Every single kid who goes to that one summer camp is evil bad. Like, they have to take a test, like, are you evil? Because otherwise you can't come swim with us.

[Paul Scheer]

And I love that they build up this entire moment, you know? And then the kids are like. It kind of feels a little hack. Yeah, it feels like it's been done before. And they show this bus pulling up in the distance again. It's timing. It's everything working together. And you see this, like, very awkward moment of. I think it's Michael Showalter just being like, hey, guys. Yeah, they don't want to do it. They feel it's kind of. And, okay, great. All right. And the bus just gets off and takes off and goes. They really do play with the convention. And I think it's, to me, a movie that informs what I like about parody, which is there are rules here. It's like Airplane. Right? Airplane has a logic to its absurdity. And I feel like this movie does the same thing because they are creating real moments, but just delivering them in bizarre ways.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the real moments, because I will say I thought we were doing this movie as, like, a break from last week's movie, which was Basic Instinct. And then I realized, like, oh, no. In so many ways, these are really similar films because it is about, like, the two genders and what they want from each other and how they go about getting it right. And I was watching this. I mean, maybe I just did too much Basic Instinct in my brain. I was writing down notes like, oh, man, Katie, that character who, like, Coop is really in love with, but she's also hooking up with Paul Rudd. She's basically the gene triple horn of this movie. And you can't tell what she thinks and what she wants. And she's, like, hyper committed to the wrong guy and, like, chasing him around and saying she loves him. And I was writing down, like, oh, Ken Marino's Victor. He's basically Michael Douglas thinking, like, every girl wants to have sex with him, and they're so crazy about it.

[Paul Scheer]

You really do have too much Basic Instinct on the brain, I think, on this point.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I do, but do I? Because when they flash forward at the very end, in the end credits to 10 years in the future, Elizabeth Banks, 10 years in the future, is dressed. She is dressed like Sharon Stone in base against it. She is. She's in the white dress. She's doing the seat. She's got her legs crossed just like that.

[Paul Scheer]

Wow, you're seeing a lot of stuff. I appreciate it. I applaud it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, oh, I'm serious about that one. But, like, let's talk about what this movie says about what sex means to people.

[Paul Scheer]

All right, great. I mean, I'll jump into it. I think that they actually show relationships on a very real level. I know it's kind of crazy to say it, but let's take the through line of Jeanine Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce. David Hyde Pierce is fantastic in this movie. I think he's also a very big get for them because at this point, Frasier is a huge hit. To see him in this movie, I think he just kills. And I also think he does something very different than Niles. You know, he's talked a lot about underplaying things, but I think in this movie he's playing that very normal, down to earth guy, but then has these very explosive moments which I think make him incredibly funny. And they kind of walk this relationship. I mean, the whole movie takes place in one day, and they kind of create this relationship between him and Gene Garofalo that is so heightened and absurd that at the end of the day, they have created this life where they've been trying for a child. They can't get it. They're gonna move to Florida together. They're doing all this sort of stuff. But I like them together. I like that relationship. And then on the same hand, you have Bradley Cooper in this movie, his film debut, by the way, and you have his relationship, which is with Michael Ian Black, and the whole thing that Michael Ian Black, he's never flirting with girls. And then they cut to why he's not flirting with girls because he's in a relationship with Bradley Cooper. And they cut to, instead of a soft scene between them, a hardcore sex scene. A hardcore sex scene that actually made Bradley Cooper miss his graduation from the new school's MFA program to shoot. And they shoot that scene and then cut to them getting married by the lake, which is heightened and insane. But also there is heart there. There is heart. And I wonder if, like, playing with the conceptions of what we know in rom coms and things like that, by kind of subverting them a little bit, we still are also getting the emotional payoff of them. I don't know, even at the end of the movie when you think that, like, Coop is gonna finally get the girl, she's like, actually, no, I really like you. And maybe when I'm older, I will be with you. But, you know, the truth is Paul Rudd is really super hot, and I just want to fuck him. And I'm gonna leave you. And there's a great. I don'. Connected to these moments. I'm not saying it's the most emotional movie, but I think that in parodying them, they're using our preconceived notions about what we think is funny about these relationships and still paying off on them.

[Amy Nicholson]

I genuinely don't care that he's kind of lame, you know? I don't even care that he cheats on me. And I like you more than I like Andy coop. But I'm 16, and maybe it'll be a different story, like when I'm ready to get married. But right now, I am entirely about sex. I just want Andy. I want to take him and grab him and just fuck his brains out, you know? So that's where my priorities are right now. Sex specifically with Andy and not with you. But you're really nice. Right? Like, it's almost making fun of how we just buy the happy endings in every other film, you know, like the Breakfast Club. Oh, great. Molly Ringwald is gonna be with Judd Nelson now. Come on. That's never gonna work out. Right?

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

But there's these happy endings in all of these kind of teen, like. And they're hugging and they're kissing and they did it. And I like that it reminds you that these are just kids making dumb decisions. Or that it takes our idea of what a happy ending looks like and it plays it forward to absurdity. Kind of, oh, I'm gonna do it again. Kind of like how you can watch Basic Instinct and have that reaction of, like, michael Douglas reformed Sharon Stone, and now they're in love forever, and he won her over and he tamed her, and now he made her a good girl by giving her vanilla sex. Or you can think, no, no, don't at all believe that this is a happy ending. I mean, by the end of this, Jeanine Garofalo is telling David Hyde Pierce that she's pregnant and they're going to move to Florida, and everything is wonderful. And you're just thinking, this is nuts, but it's just the same thing, only more nuts. Happy summer. It is hot. Have you found the shorts? You know what I mean? The shorts that fit great, feel comfy, look good. The pair of shorts that you grab first, the ones you dig out from the laundry. If you're gonna go run an errand, meet up with a friend, head to the movies, walk the dog. Quince specializes in basics that become the cornerstone of your wardrobe. Like their organic stretch cotton shorts. Those come in a few different cuts so that you can pick the pair that is right for your style. Maybe it's the utility shorts. They come in ivory black, olive. Great pockets on those. Maybe it's the chino shorts. Simple chic fan fave. They come in those three colors plus three more. Navy, orange and pink. The regular Chino shorts, those hit mid thigh and if you like your shorts closer to the knee, scope out the chino Bermuda shorts. Six colors on those same quality fabric, 10 and a half inch inseam. Catch me at the par three golf course. I'm going to be rocking that pair in the olive green.

[Paul Scheer]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Paul Scheer]

I truly, truly love Quint because they make elevated essentials using premium material like European linen, organic cotton. I have these linen pants that I got from Quince that are absolutely delightful. I was in Vegas this past weekend and I wore them out. Not only did I get compliments on them, but in 111 degree heat, I felt perfect. That's right. I wasn't sweating up a storm. And I looked good, too. And you know what? It's not just apparel. It's elevated essentials for your home. From bedding to bath to kitchen essentials and furniture. That's right. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quints app for app exclusive offers or go to quints.com unspooled get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too.

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Paul Scheer]

unspooled I think that there's something here. And it's always hard to kind of critique comedy or talk about comedy because it's like, it's gotta make you laugh. And clearly this movie did not make Roger Ebert laugh, you know, and this is a very aggressive form of comedy because it's not just parody. It's almost anti parody in the sense that there are jokes that exist in this universe. I mean, one of the jokes I love, I already kind of mentioned it was like when they go into town, they all get addicted to hardcore drugs and they are in a flop house and they are completely cracked out. Their lives are destroyed and they cut back to camp. They're completely clean cut and they've only been gone for an hour. Right. And that, like, clearly just, it's its own little vignette. I don't even know if it's parodying anything but just being absurd. And then to top that scene off, they all run away and then Blair Witch style line up against a shed wall with their faces at the shed wall like, all right, great, see you later. And they just run into a wall and stand there. And I love stuff like that. I think it's. I think the movie doesn't care about commentary on summer camp as much as they are putting their sensibility in a summer camp world. Yes, it has some structure and cliches that are being parodied, but it's completely original ideas. Like, they're. You know, they're taking them and they're kind of freeing them up just from turning it on its head. It's like they turn it on its head and then they hit it over the head with a frying pan.

[Amy Nicholson]

Actually, I like the way you phrase that because it does feel like they made a list of every sort of thing they would think is funny and then put it in without it having to necessarily be the same kind of comedy.

[Paul Scheer]

Right. And I think that because of that, you can be connected to characters. I think it's the same thing that Scary Movie Franchise did in the beginning. I really love Anna Faris and Regina in those movies because there's an emotional core between these characters. Yes. There's absurdity going on there, and I would argue that that's more absurd for absurd's sake. But you still have to have a center in these movies. I think the airplane does that as well. I think all good parody. Naked Gun, another perfect example of this where you have to like and root for these characters and they could act like jerks. Like, I mean, we watched Paul Rudd kill multiple children in this movie, which is so fun. And I love that bit that there's always a witness that he also has to get rid of.

[Amy Nicholson]

And apparently, like, in the earlier drafts, he was gonna make it even worse. He was gonna tell the kids, like, let's go to a pizza party, and he'd take them out into the woods, and you would see him grab a gun and put a silencer on and then shoot him two bullets in the head. And apparently David Wayne's dad said, if you do that, I will disown you.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God, I love that. I mean, you know, there is something also about celebrating the nerds. This movie does lift up the nerds from summer camp. It shows everybody, in a sense, it feels like meatballs in that way where, you know, David Hyde Pierce adopts the nerds. We see this funny structure of the radio dj, who doesn't even have a station. He's just a kid in a room pretending to be the radio DJ for the camp. Right. It definitely feels like it was written by the kids who might not have been that popular. But at the same time, are you

[Amy Nicholson]

telling me these comedians didn't grow up popular? Are you telling me that comedians don't necessarily rule over their school?

[Paul Scheer]

But at the same time, I don't think it's looking at hot people with a negative point of view either. Like, you know, I think if anything, it kind of Rounds out the world, you know? And I think it shows everything. The only thing that this movie doesn't do that is a trope of movies like this is a serial killer, right? There's no Sleepaway Camp. There's no Jason Voorhees, but they really kind of tackle everything. And the amount of movies I've watched for, how did this get made? I see all these references that they have stolen. I mean, from wardrobe down to even characters. I mean, there's so much in this movie that they cribbed from Sleepaway Camp. When I watched Sleepaway Camp, I was like, oh, my God. That's the baseline of this movie. Which is interesting, because when we talked about Airplane, they had a baseline as well.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah. I think Paul Rudd has said that he took a lot of his character from the Matt Dillon character in Little Darlings, which is just like Camp Touchstone for girls who love movies about girls being hot and weird and messy and strange and wild and so in Little Darlings, there's a girl who has this crush on this character played by Matt Dillon, who is the bad boy that you fall in love with when you're a teenage girl and you don't know any better. So where'd you get the car? The car park. What about the girl? She came in the car, and Paul Rudd just takes that and runs with it. Like he has that bandana in his back pocket, which is sort of Bruce Springsteen, but it's really awesome. Matt Dillon and Little Darlings is where he's getting that from. I'm fascinated by his bad boyfriend character. Like, to me, that is just my absolute favorite thing in this entire film because it is so perfect. Like this scene. Oh, I was thinking maybe we could take a walk later. Maybe go out to Gunner's Pass one last time.

[Paul Scheer]

God damn it, Katie. You're suffocating me. I'm choking. All right, give me some breathing room.

[Amy Nicholson]

I just want to spend some time with you. You know, it's our last day.

[Paul Scheer]

K camp. My butt itches.

[Amy Nicholson]

What are you talking about? Hey, we're soulmates, right? What?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, whatever.

[Amy Nicholson]

Get you want.

[Paul Scheer]

J.J. save me a waffle, man.

[Amy Nicholson]

Andy, I'm serious.

[Paul Scheer]

Come on. I just wanted to be special, you dyke.

[Amy Nicholson]

Why are you being such an asshole?

[Paul Scheer]

I gotta finish my breakfast. I love you, baby. So good talking to you.

[Amy Nicholson]

That is just the, like, whiplash of that. The hot, the cold, the hot, the cold, the hot, the cold. And the way it does just drive girls wild and make a man take up way too much brain space in your own head because you cannot tell what they're thinking. He is so funny. There's something about Paul Rudd in this movie where he, to me, exists in the scenes even deeper than any other person does. I don't quite know exactly how to explain that. Like, everybody else is living the movie and they're in their character and they're doing their thing and they're being very funny. But then he's doing something that's just like, to me, one step further. Like when they're doing the talent show, right, and the weird kid starts summoning wind in his like Carrie esque special Powers forces thing. And everyone's like, whoa, I'm getting blown away. Or whoa, I'm making out in the wind, or whoa, this thing is happening. And when the camera pans to him, Paul Rudd is like standing there, fake electric guitaring and waggling his tongue and letting his tongue. Like he looks like a dog putting his head out of the window. His tongue is going everywhere. He's living in that scene in some sort of a different reality than everybody else.

[Paul Scheer]

I think that there's something to be said for the fact that he could have been a camp counselor in this movie. Like, there is really good casting there. Right? Like, he looks the part in the right way. I think Elizabeth Banks does as well. Like, you know, I think it's his good casting. And also, as we've seen from Paul Rudd, he has that kind of fun swagger where he can be the smart dumb guy really well. I mean, that thing where the, you know, the whatever where he like walks away is like one of the most, what, gifable moments online, right? That. Fine. That moment. That is one of the most gift moments on the Internet. I think it captures a little bit of his personality. Something that he's continued to kind of refine and do versions of, but this is the first time that you're seeing it. I don't know if he just fits perfectly in that camp. He's got a really fun character. Cause in a way, he doesn't have any emotional stakes throughout the movie too. So he can kind of make those scenes pop.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean, there is this documentary that they released a couple years ago called Hurricane of Fun where it's like just footage of them on the set. One of my favorite things in it is he's doing that scene where Janine tells him to clean up his stuff and he's all mad about it and he's like huffing around and the camera starts looking at Amy Poehler. Watching him do it. And you're watching all of these people try not to laugh.

[Paul Scheer]

And.

[Amy Nicholson]

And her face is just enchanted. It's like she's watching Santa Claus. It's like Santa Claus is real and he's come down and it's comedy Santa Claus. And she's just lit up with how wonderful she thinks his performance is. And I adore it. I mean, he's also just, like, super funny in what he says in, like, the B roll, like, when he's trying to answer those questions, like, what are you doing in this movie, Paul Rudd? How did you get involved with the film Wet Hot American Summer? This is not a good thing. Well,

[Paul Scheer]

it was a pretty low point in my life. And I remember I said, jesus, please give me something that's gonna renew my spirit, my faith, and my hope. And then the next day, this script showed up, and I didn't know what it was. I picked it up, I leafed through it, and that script was Mission Impossible 2. And I couldn't get an audition for it. I don't even know how I got the script. But actually, on my way to my agent to bitch about how I couldn't get a meeting for that film, I found this script sitting on the desk of one of the assistants and read like, the first couple pages. Couldn't make it through the rest, but I knew.

[Amy Nicholson]

You knew. I know.

[Paul Scheer]

I know.

[Amy Nicholson]

You knew.

[Paul Scheer]

I knew. If I could not find.

[Amy Nicholson]

I knew you mean by what you mean.

[Paul Scheer]

If I could not find another job, I would like to be in this film. And that's how it happened for me.

[Amy Nicholson]

I know. I don't know. I don't know. I know I'm ranting. There's just something where, like, I'm finally realizing that Paul Rudd is maybe one of the greatest comedy minds of my generation.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, Paul Rudd can do it all. We talked about this a while ago. Like, he is. If you are gonna put a center point of comedy in the 2000s, it is Paul Rudd. I mean, still to this day, you can really draw a line from him to some of the most interesting comedies. You know, we can go on and on about it, but I think that there is a level of performance and knowledge of comedy that seems almost equal. And what I kind of will say and not pointing about this movie. I think there are some people who are very good at doing comedy and some people who are very good at acting. And sometimes when they do comedy, they push their characters into a little bit more of a stereotype. And I think that there are people who are good Comedians who sometimes can't necessarily pull off the acting moments of it all. And then you get these moments where you get people like Paul Rudd or Chris Hemsworth. Remember when he went on that run of just doing acting in movies? He has great comic timing. He could just nail these scenes. I think that there's probably something there where he just has a good balance of himself and what to play and what to push. And he doesn't over push it, nor does he make his characters too, too ridiculous. You almost buy that every one of these characters is him. I buy Fontana from, you know, Anchorman. That's a version of him. Like, he does a good job of not playing a sketch of himself, if that makes sense.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, there's something, I don't know, bone deep when he does this. Right. Like, it never just feels like he's got a dumb wig on.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, and speaking about that kind of commitment, I think it's good to look at Christopher Maloney here too. Christopher Maloney, very serious guy, obviously, in the last 10 years. Plus, we know that Christopher Maloney is a funny guy, but what he does in this movie is. I don't remember knowing who Christopher Maloney was when you saw this. And you're like, whoa, who is that guy? And I feel like he fully transforms himself to this guy Gene, this, you know, Vietnam vet who is working in the kitchen, who has a lot of pent up issues about his own sexuality, et cetera. And I feel like, I don't know, I'd argue that Gene might even be an emotional centerpiece of the film. Even though it's ridiculous, even though he fondles sweaters, even though, you know, he talks to a can of vegetables. There is something about his journey. It's so committed, it's so real that I think that it really, it's fulfilling to see him, you know, kind of come around in this film.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I mean, his arc is basically the arc of every kid's movie that I dislike and get really frustrated by, which is, you know, here's a big speech. I know who I am. Give me a clip. I put it to you, Camp Firewood,

[Paul Scheer]

as we spend our last dinner together.

[Amy Nicholson]

Be proud who you are. Look at me, ma. I made it.

[Paul Scheer]

I'm okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

I usually hate that as like a sincere plot point when movies are like, all you have to do is just believe in who you are and be proud of it. And now there's patriotic drums behind you and you're just gonna be great and everybody's gonna love you if you just admit what you like. And it always feels like spiked Kool Aid to me. Like, that's not really how the world works. And when a movie plays that point, seriously, I get so annoyed. All the Trolls comedies do that. I'm like, stop it. Just stop it. Stop telling people that. That's all there is to life is like, be proud of who you are. Not that you shouldn't be proud of who you are. But come on, can we get real here? Right.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I mean, they make it so that the person that makes him come out or come out or come out of his shell, whatever you want to say, is a can. I mean, you know, the can of vegetables voiced by John Benjamin, who is amazing, obviously, from Bob's Burgers and Archer and everything like that. That. That relationship, you know, I think because it's put through this lens, lets us look at it in a different way. I think that, again, this is something that probably couldn't work on the page if it wasn't played with this much commitment. And I feel like this is the thing about this movie is the absurdity is played to such a degree that you have, like, if you're not on board, you're gonna hate it. If you are on board, you can let it kind of wash over you. It's. You know, to me, when I see that moment where they hate this group that's singing Godspell, oh, my God, they're terrible. They're not into it. And they cut to that song, and it is truly Broadway level. A wonderful, like, performance of this Godspell song. And then they cut to the audience just booing it, like, oh, you suck. They hate you. Like, there is. And it's like, they kind of counteract redemption arcs, like what you're expecting. But then with the gene and the vegetables, it's. They embrace it. Like, you don't. The movie is constantly subverting your expectations within the parody as well. I think that's actually what really is helpful with it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, I think I just realized I was reading that scene wrong.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, really?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I thought, and I was surprised that it was the joke. I was like, wow, okay. I thought the joke was that this was a summer camp of Jewish children who were booing because there was a cross on stage. And I thought that was the joke. And I was like, holy shit, that's really intense.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, no, it's because they're amazing.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wow. All right.

[Paul Scheer]

And they're loving that Catskill comic, who is, like, hands down, the worst comic. When I was a kid, we used to be in Cave, you know, whatever. His caveman jokes. Like, they're loving that and they're hating this. It's like, yeah, No, I think that that's just a version of that last moment. Just like the softball scene.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, it's hard to tell sometimes because this is a movie where the joke go far in a way, where they feel more shocking, I think, today even, than they did in 2001. I mean, the number of children, the number of minors having sex in this movie is astonishing.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, it opens with that. I mean, it opens with that.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, it opens with that. They're getting married. They're making out. You're like, all right, all right. It's clearly a pre Pizzagate world.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, one of the minors is getting married to Molly Shannon. Molly Shannon is kind of cut off from the main plot. It seems like she has all these side scenes about her going through a divorce, and one of these kids helps her through a divorce, and then they are off to get married. And even that kissing scene when Camarino runs back to find this girl that was gonna have sex with him. She's, like, making out with the kid who farts Moose. You know, it's like they go there. I think, in watching it now, so much of this movie has seeped into comedy in the last 25 years that I think that this movie, if it came out now, would be so much more accepted. Because this was a lot of people who 25 years ago were like, I love comedy because of movies like this. It's interesting that a movie like this or MacGruber, both that are huge failures at the box office, but yet go on with such a cult status. Because I think that people. It's the first to the party. It's the reason why Pauline Kael hated Raiders of the Lost Ark. She's like, oh, this is lazy and dumb. I don't know if those are the exact words, but roughly. And I think that this movie has opened up doors. So it's even in watching it again, I'm like, this movie's great. It's better than even I remember it. It's aged better. It doesn't feel like it's gotten old. It feels just as present. I mean, I think a movie like Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar doesn't exist if this movie doesn't come out first. You know, it feels to me like it's embracing elements of movies that we talked about, like the Jerk. You know, the Jerk is very much, you know, symbiotic here, you know, to what they're doing here, it's absurd, but it has heart. And I feel like that's the thing that often is missing. And that's Showalter and that's David Wayne. And also the good actors that they've surrounded themselves with. I mean, Janine Garofalo is an emotional core of this movie. She's not incredibly ridiculous in this.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, she's definitely the straightest character. Like, her straightness is almost endearing. When she's talking to. And she's like, oh, you think that he'll think I'm pretty if I wear slacks? Should I wear a skirt? A moose. That's wild. But she's, like, so bought in. I mean, I think the casting here is everything. Like, I think if this movie wasn't so perfectly cast, it launches superstars for a reason. It's perfectly cast, and it finds great people, and the people do a great job. Like, if there was a weak link in any of these characters, I think it would collapse. You know, Like, I've become a huge Ken Marino devotee. I loved him in your show Black Monday. I love him in, you know, party Down. I love him in everything. I think he's so funny in this, so wonderful. But they're all just fabulous, and it's funny to see where they'll go, you know, like, looking at this now and knowing that, like, Elizabeth Banks is gonna wind up directing, Bradley Cooper's gonna get nominated for Oscars, and he's even already just feeling like that guy here. When you watch the B roll of this movie, you're not thinking, wow, what a shock that Bradley Cooper took this left turn and then became, like, a serious, serious person. He's so serious on the set of this in a way that I just find funny. I mean, this is him just talking about being on his first professional set and, like, wow, this is what a director does.

[Paul Scheer]

In order to make a movie like

[Amy Nicholson]

this, which is basically a lot of

[Paul Scheer]

short scenes put together, you have to have somebody who knows exactly what he or she is doing. And that has to be in the

[Amy Nicholson]

role of the director.

[Paul Scheer]

And that's his role as. And he performs it perfectly.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, there is a touch of naivete in that, maybe. Well, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, he's graduating from the New School. Like, I mean, that's it. Like, he's. This is a big deal for him. And I think that that's a good director, too. Like, David Wayne made people feel safe. One of the things now I'm gonna. I'm terrible at years and dates But Stella, which was the show that David Wayne, Showalter and Mike Black did, was this big show in New York City before it became a Comedy Central show where they would have the best and biggest comedians perform, and they would show these short films. And you can watch their short films. I believe they're online. You can in many different things. They have great big actors in it, and they're doing things that are parodying the Big Chill. And they're always making these films, and they're always casting people in a way that plays right to their sensibility. I think that David Wayne and Show Walter really know how to get the most out of their people, and I think make them feel comfortable enough to do what they're doing. And so it's good on camera. Like, I feel like probably some of that stuff with Bradley Cooper is good, like, keeping him, not trying to play the funny, but kind of embrace this character or talk to different people in different ways. Again, they would probably have a different point of view, but this is something that they've really perfected and made and really were great at doing. Like, balancing a tone that's uniquely them that I think has become something that, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, they have to look to this movie, this group of people, because it is true vulgarity in a way that we've never really heard it before. Like, I feel like this movie pushes that boundary. Like, and I know people talk about Kentucky Fried Movie and stuff like that, but those movies, I always felt, like, pushed boobs. Boobs and dick, right? Like. And sex. But, like, this movie is like, you know, fuck my cock. And just these lines. Like I said, the hardcore sex scene with. They do things in this movie that I think make you go like, oh, my God, you can do that. Like, they open up the doors. They took full advantage of their R rating. And I think that you can thank anything from Eastbound and Down to, you know, like, I mean, obviously affected me. There's so many doors that were open by this style of comedy that was very popular in New York City, live on stage, that they took to a mainstream thing. And I just think it kind of grew out across the country. You know, Mr. Show is doing stuff like this, too. But I don't think that Mr. Show in Run, Ronnie Run did what they did in what hot American summer, like, Run, Ronnie run. I love Mr. Show. I just felt like that was not a Mr. Show movie, and there's a lot of reasons why that was not a Mr. Show movie. I understand that, but they actually executed an unfiltered vision of what they were and what they were doing.

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Paul Scheer]

is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadowdark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s and man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on YouTube.com theglasscannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

[Amy Nicholson]

Unschooled. Well, I think they took it and then gave it even one more twist because like the hardcore sex scene between Bradley Cooper and Michael Ian Black, the joke isn't even that it's hardcore as much as the joke is that it's like tender and sincere. And it's like the one moment of actual genuine love and human connection. Everybody else is like, sticking their tongues in people's faces and it's kind of repulsive. And that one is sort of beautiful. And the fact that they're letting the joke be the beauty of it, right? And I guess that they understand that that's more of a Bradley sensibility. They're not hiring some, like, jokey guy. They're hiring like a really earnest person, to your point, who is, I think, very sincere about everything. I mean, one of my favorite behind the scenes stories I heard is that when Christopher Meloni is about to give that big speech of like, oh, I'm proud of who I am. He is just kind of staring at a map of Vietnam. Just kind of staring, getting ready. And Bradley Cooper goes up to him and he's like, hey, are you looking at that map of Vietnam to, like, remember where your character came from? Is this, like your inspiration? Are you getting to that moment with, like, sense memory work? And Christopher Milne is like, no, I'm just here. The map is just here. I don't know what you're talking about. But he thinks he's going to a deep and beautiful method place. And that's kind of what his character is. His character's trying to make. His character is very sincere. Like, it is him. So it is about, I guess, the perfection of the casting.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, and, you know, I want to say, like, I say hardcore sex scene. I meant, like, unexpected. Right, right. And I love the way they shoot it where you see their socks. You know, like, you see them in those, like, not sweat socks, but yeah, they are sweat socks. Like those, like, kind of sweat socks.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love those socks.

[Paul Scheer]

You know, it's like there is something there. And I feel like it's not making fun of. I don't think this movie makes fun of anything, honestly. I don't think it makes fun of gay culture. I don't think it makes fun of the hormones of. I don't think it makes fun of the nerds. I think it finds ways to embrace everybody's weirdness. And that's why I think the power of summer camp is you can find your group of people.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah, I mean, I think it makes fun of the people who would make fun of him. Like, that is making fun of the guys who think that Michael Ian Black just gets so awkward around women and we really have to, like, help him out. And boy, what a nerd.

[Paul Scheer]

He gets so uncomfortable whenever we talk openly about sexual issues, you know, he's never been with a girl before.

[Amy Nicholson]

McKinley needs to experience the ultimate. And I think you know what I'm talking about.

[Paul Scheer]

You mean penis and vagina?

[Amy Nicholson]

Total dickhead sex. But then, honestly, then it even comes out of it. And it's those same guys later, who are giving him a Bradley Cooper, a chaise lounge. So it's like, you know, there is a gentleness, right?

[Paul Scheer]

And also the weird thing where it's like we have to watch him have sex. Like, which is also such an 80s trope. Like, we're gonna not only get him laid, but we're gonna watch him get laid. Like, that's like they're excited about that.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, the fact that these guys are looking at a bunch of girls in bikinis just playing with a giant inflatable ball and calling them nymphomaniacs, I mean, that, to me, I think, is part of what Paul Verhoeven is making fun of in Basic Instinct. You know, people making the world filthy. And I think this is a fun counterpoint to that because, you know, remember last week we were talking about how outraged the LGBTQ community was. It's like, finally we get a queer couple in a movie, and they have to be murderers. Well, this is like, finally we get a queer couple in a movie, and they're like the most sensitive couple in it, and they're tender and loving, and they really seem like they're gonna make it work. They're like the one couple I really believe in.

[Paul Scheer]

I also love 80 miles in this movie. We haven't talked about him yet. He is like kind of the assistant in the kitchen. We talk about kind of a lower key performance just put upon, like, the way that he reacts to Meloni. Like, he has been yelled at all summer. And there's something so interesting about that dynamic as well. And I think that if I look at, like, David Wayne films, I think what he is good at. And as we're talking about this, it's coming clear to me. He knows how to treat each couplet of characters slightly differently. So it has a vibe of a sketch show in the sense that we're going hard in one direction and we're gonna go in a different direction. So it's kind of relieving and pushing on pressure. So it's not just like absurdity growing until it gets to. It will topple over. I think it's a little bit like conducting an orchestra. It's like, okay, we're gonna do this sketch. It's when you put together a great sketch show. You can have great sketches, but it's all about the running order. How do you fuel from one piece to the next? How do you build something so at the end they leave wanting more? And I do think that consciously or unconsciously, this movie is built so you are hitting different types of absurdity. It's actually way more calculated and smarter than most people will give it credit for. And I can see why people are like, ah, it's just dumb. Nothing means anything. They're just running around being stupid. But when you can be stupid this effectively, I think Eric Andre does this really well. I think Tim and Eric as well. That's a talent, that's an art. Because Dadaism isn't funny. Dadaism is just dadaism.

[Amy Nicholson]

And I think it is really hard to do. Even as evidenced by the fact that I haven't loved a lot of Michael Schulzer's later period films. I like the big Sick, right? There are moments I like in Eyes of Tammy Faye. I think the idea of you and Spoiler alert were like gigantic messes. They're also like strange couples getting together. And here's how it works. And it feels almost like he's making the sincere version of what he's making fun of here, right? I mean, the Idea of youf, that's the one where Anne Hathaway winds up with like Nicholas Galaxy. And it's basically about a woman falling in love with Harry Styles. And what he does in that movie that I find so insulting is he's like, no, no, no. They're gonna make it work out. They just want to be like, no. Why? They don't have to make it work out. Let either one of them give the I just want to get laid. I'm only 16. I'm an idiot. I'm a pop star. I'm a woman who's figuring herself out in her 40s. It doesn't have to wind up in these happy endings, you know?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I think that, like, Showalter and Wayne, as, like a co writing, directing duo, I think have a really nice back and forth. I think that Showalter is really good at getting performances and heart. I think that David has a big heart and he's so funny and wants to push the absurdity. I watched David's directed that Adam Pally show with Steph Curry that was on Mr. Throwback. And of course, that was created by the Libmans and David Casp. David Casp, who co created Black Monday and the Libmans, wrote Black Monday. They love jokes and they can push jokes, but they also can get these moments that feel real. Like the first Scene of that Mr. Throwback Adam Pally, gets his ass kicked by this Russian mobster, but yet it's funny, too. I feel like that's an art. And I feel like the two of them together was a very special kind of magic. And I like that they kind of come together and they do their own things. They continue to work. And this is also a group that is getting its due a little bit this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. There's a whole documentary about the state coming up. There has been a lot of state love in the last couple of years. Whether it's at Sketchfest, you know, they've been doing live readings of Wet Hot before the pandemic, before live reads were a thing. I think that sketch comedy, you can kind of see it better out of the moment because the smart kids, the cool kids, they get it and they bring it into their life and it affects the rest. It's like music, it's whatever, you know, it's like this is the. They're the first wave of doing something big. And without their show, there was no my show, and so on and so forth.

[Amy Nicholson]

It's interesting how I think comedy really can wind up aging better than the serious dramatic movies, because I can't help but put Wet American Summer in the line with American Beauty and American Pie, two movies that came out right before. I mean, come on, would you put American in your title after those two movies have already been a big deal? I think you do have some idea that you're in conversation with them, especially American Pie, being about, like, teenagers trying to have sex for the first time, losing their virginity. A movie that I've been really kind of curious to go back and look at again to see if it played out how I remember it. I remember to me, like, one of the most interesting things in that movie was that it decided that also then not all the couples have to stay together forever, that the couples can just act like teenagers. And it felt really mature at the time, although. So it's strange. We were like, this is the grown up one. Even though it is the one with webcams and spying and people having sex with pies. It felt like it was more mature than most of the teen comedies we'd seen up until that point. Maybe just because the female characters had a point of view.

[Paul Scheer]

You know, we talk a lot about this, like, what's the new order of things, right? These are all new ideas. These are all new People that are finally getting their voice out there, people who've been affected by the AFI Top 100 list. We talked about how the AFI Top 100 list doesn't, you know, acknowledge comedy that much. But in a weird way, the way that horror and comedy are kind of entry points, or used to be anyway, to kind of building a career, I think that, you know, what you're basically doing is a low budget way for somebody to do something incredibly unique.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I think that's really true. And, you know, I think that if this had been a dramatic movie that launched this many careers, it would immediately be taken more seriously than a comedy that launches this many careers.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, the one thing I can say in doing comedy, and I always remember this, I was doing so many shows in New York City at ucb, performing all around, and we definitely were pushing buttons that weren't even intentional. They were just what we thought were funny, what the audiences liked. I came out to LA and we just did the same thing. We weren't pushing buttons, we were just doing arsh stuff. And the reaction initially was like, whoa. And a lot of looking to your left and your right. Now, I don't know if that's an industry town thing. And they wanted to make sure they could laugh, but there was a hesitation to laugh at certain things that pushed limits. And that, to me, is why we need movie theaters. It's odd, though, that these movies explode on home video, but maybe it's because when you're with a small group of people, you can laugh with them and then that kind of infects. It's sort of like. It's like a trust circle that kind of builds out, builds out, builds out. But I've noticed that in the past is like you sometimes have to force it all the way in and it takes a beat. But LA got around to it and it became as exciting as New York, or at least accepting as New York is to push these different things. That was my experience. That was a lot of people's experience when UCB came out here to accept what we were doing. And now it's kind of commonplace. So I think that comedy always takes a little bit of time, but the cool kids get.

[Amy Nicholson]

I'm just glad that this movie wound up getting found because a movie today that comes out in like one theater and nobody sees it, nobody might ever know that it exists. And it astonishes me that Roger Ebert even reviewed it. Even to give it a one star is like, better than how it would go today where there's not enough Bandwidth to review tiny movies because there's so many tiny movies, and it's hard to tell what, you know, what counts. And so, like, I appreciate that this movie managed to survive.

[Paul Scheer]

Absolutely. And I think that, you know, a lot of the movies that we've talked about on this show. Big Lebowski, Office Space, Jennifer's Body, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Idiocracy, are all movies that have had a similar trajectory and have had such an influence on culture. And I think it always helpful for us to go back and look at stuff if we didn't get it, and some people do. We gotta listen to why people like it, why people are on board with it, because maybe we are wrong. Maybe we're not ready for it yet. It's like that Marty McFly line in back to the Future. It's like, yeah, maybe you're not ready for this, but your kids are gonna love it. That idea, I think, is prevalent in all culture always.

[Amy Nicholson]

By the way, before we have to go, the news has definitely gotten out that it was raining the entire time they shot this movie. Raining, Absolutely miserable, Absolutely upset. Everybody's losing their mind. They're living in this life where it feels as though summer camp and the set are blurring. Everybody's getting drunk every day. People are sleeping in each other's bunks. There's a lot of coded talk. And I like watching this movie thinking, like, oh, I feel like they were hooking up. Oh, I think they were hooking up. Who knows? And you can hear in David Wayne's voice because he is the director and responsible for pulling all of this off. The exhaustion, really.

[Paul Scheer]

It's like the last day of camp.

[Amy Nicholson]

The movie and the making of the

[Paul Scheer]

movie have become one thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

They're all blurred together. And it's very sad to leave this surreal, intense, non real life. But the thing that really shocked me was he did this entire movie in the rain, in the woods without ever buying an appropriate pair of shoes. He wore dress shoes like he's going to the law office. He wore dress shoes in the mud this entire time. Never got around to buying boots. Cannot believe that. Absolutely astounding.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, wow, that is perfectly David. But oddly, he knows everything about, like. Well, I mean, David's more into tech than, I guess, into clothes, But I don't know. I think he's kind of the same. Make sure you check out our substack each and every week to go a little bit deeper on the movies that we talk about here. It's always free, so join in the conversation. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson, sound engineered by Cory Barton, music by Devin Bryant, episode art by Kim Troxall, show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Rome production. See you next week. Bye for now.

[Amy Nicholson]

From the parents behind Law and Order comes a mystery the whole family can enjoy. Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries Step into the whimsical world of Patrick Picklebottom, a precocious 11 year old with a love for reading and an uncanny ability to solve mysteries. Inspired by the beloved children's book of the same name, this podcast vividly brings Patrick's tales of deduction and everyday adventures to life as he unravels baffling enigmas and solves clever cases. Patrick Picklebottom Everyday Mysteries is perfect for kids and is just as entertaining for

[Paul Scheer]

grownups who love a good mystery.

[Amy Nicholson]

The whole family can listen now. Wherever you get your podcasts, you've watched them from the outside your whole life. On tv, on stage, on the COVID The success that always looks like it happened to someone on a different planet. But what if it didn't? I'm Evelyn and I've spent over 25 years in entertainment producing for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. And here's what I learned. The distance between you and them. It's a lot shorter than anyone's letting on. On my podcast, Repin, I sit down with the people you've been watching and I ask them who they actually are. Not the brand, the person. Where they started, what it cost them, what almost broke them. Their grit, their courage, their resilience. And the lessons they've learned. It's all yours for the taking, Repn. Wherever you listen.